I can manage the collection — why do budgets still trip me?

You handle the day-to-day well. People, schedules, the collection itself — none of that frightens you. Then the budget arrives, and suddenly you are slow, circling, asking for one more week of data. Look at this honestly. The numbers are not the hard part. You can add. What you avoid is the moment where you tell someone their project loses funding, or your own plan shrinks, and you have to stand there without an excuse. That is not a math problem. That is a will problem. No one trips on arithmetic. They trip on consequence. The budget is just the place where your choices get a name and a date.